SEO Isn't Magic - So Stop Doing SEO&nbspTricks

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Hi everybody! My name is Ruth Burr and I’m the new Lead SEO here at SEOmoz. I’m super excited to be here! I’ll be posting on SEO here regularly going forward, but for my first post I wanted to tell you guys that when it comes to SEO, this is how I roll:

I know a woman who’s recently lost about 30 pounds. She looks great, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone compliment her on her new look and then ask, “What’s your secret?” “Just eating right and exercising,” she replies – and their faces invariably fall. Eating right and exercising? BO-RING! Sounds hard!

The truth is, we’re all looking for shortcuts to help us get the results we want without putting in the work we need to do to achieve them (think about the “1 Weird Old Trick” ads you see everywhere). We step on the scale, think about the hard low-cal high-cardio road ahead, and think, “Surely there’s a better/faster/easier way to do this.”

SEOs do this all the time. We want that magic bullet to get our sites to the top of the SERPs, the one “secret trick” to get the edge on our competitors. And just like fad diets, a lot of secret/sneaky SEO tricks do work for a while. When I started doing SEO in 2006, one of my tasks was to go into our older blog posts and bold or un-bold various keywords, so the content would update and be seen as “fresh.” And you know what? It worked for a while. Remember Page Rank sculpting? TOTALLY worked for a while. Remember directory submissions and blog comment spamming for links? Of course you do, because they are still going on.

Weaning Ourselves Off of Short-Term Gains

Look, I get it, guys. It’s so easy to adopt SEO tricks, and when they actually WORK it can be incredibly hard to turn them down. If all of your competitors are outranking you thanks to their huge volume of paid/spammy links, the moral high ground’s not gonna put food on the table, amirite? So I feel ya. The “if it works I’m doing it, regardless of whether or not it follows the guidelines or is a good user experience” approach has gotten some serious short-term gains for some people (to my continuing chagrin – for more on this topic, see Wil Reynolds’ post How Google Makes Liars Out of the Good Guys in SEO). Regardless of my personal feelings on whether or not they’re good for the Internet, I’m not going to say tricks don’t ever work.

The problem with SEO tricks is that they’re about getting a site to the top of the SERPs regardless of whether it deserves to be there. That’s the kind of trick that search engines have a vested interest in continuing to combat, which leads to algorithmic updates like Penguin. Over-reliance on SEO tricks is what causes your rankings and traffic to be completely wiped out overnight by these updates. Without a foundation of quality SEO in place, you’re going to spend a lot of your time fixing stuff and doing stuff over every time the search engines catch on to your latest trick.

SEO is Hard

The difficulty with weaning ourselves off of SEO tricks is that doing SEO without doing tricks is hard freaking work. It is way harder to build great content and fix crummy code and build linking relationships and get people to share and link to your content and then do all that again, over and over, than it is to submit to a bunch of directories and hire a freelancer to spin some content to syndicate on article sites and to comment spam neglected blogs and then buy a bunch of links.

However, it’s a lot easier to build great content and fix crummy code and build linking relationships and get people to share and link to your content and then do all that again, over and over, and have it NEVER STOP WORKING, than it is to completely change everything you do every year or so because your websites keep getting algorithmic slaps. And it’s a lot less stressful, in the long run, not to have to explain to your clients why their sites are totally hosed now.

SEO Tactics that Never Stop Working

We talk a lot about how SEO changes all the time, but in the 6 years I’ve been doing this, here are some things that have never stopped working for me:

Find the terms that people are using to search for your products, and then talk about your products on-site using those terms, without using them so much you sound crazy.

Make sure a search engine can find every page on your site, read the content and figure out what the page is about (i.e. what keywords it should rank for).

Fix the broken stuff on your site, remove duplicate content and make the whole site faster.

Create interesting, relevant, fresh content that is designed to engage users and encourage them to share it.

Build links to your site from other high-authority sites with which you share a topic or audience – better yet, build relationships with those sites that can earn you links again and again.

Make sure you’ve got a good experience for users once they get to the site: the content they see is the content they wanted. That’s what search engines want to happen, and that’s how users give you money.

The ways in which we do these things have changed a lot over the years, and we’ve been given a lot of new tools (social media, schema.org, the canonical tag) to do them with, but despite the fact that a lot has changed, a lot hasn’t.

Just like with weight loss, doing things the right way (the hard way) may not work as fast, but it will work for longer. Every time your competitors get slapped down for their SEO tricks, they have to spend a few months fixing everything and making up for the rankings they lost when their tricks stopped working, then finding a new trick and implementing that. You get to spend that same time building your foundation even stronger. Over time that’s going to make for a solid, well ranked, algorithm-proof site.

About RuthBurrReedy —
Ruth Burr Reedy is an SEO and online marketing consultant and speaker. She is currently the Director of Strategy at UpBuild, a technical marketing agency specializing in SEO, web analytics and conversion rate optimization. Prior to her move to Oklahoma, she was Head of SEO at Moz. She has been working in SEO since 2006 and has spoken on SEO and online marketing at events all over the world.

When any site got rank on the first page or quick up in serp by using the black hat seo then that is good for some time but when this caught by the Google, it gives a penalty and this site 5-6 month of time to recover from this. Some black hat techniques are still running in seo or did not caught by Google algorithm but don’t use the short techniques to grow yourself and find some new techniques for growing.

I also agree with you, it is something I've seen time and time again. A typical scenario is this:

Me: "Hi 'client', you will have noticed that abcxyz.com is now ranking number 1 for 'keyword'. This has put you in 2nd place."

Client: "*Panic*"

Me: "But dont worry, it looks like they have been buying links/spamming directories/*insert dodgy method here*. At the end of the day your site is at the top of the rankings on merit, their site isn't. They will fall soon."

Client: "Can't we start doing some dodgy stuff do catch up?"

Me: "Trust me, there will be no need. I did however get you a really good link from abcxyz.com.....etc".

Hi RuthBurr, good warning message to SEOs. Don't waste your time to find tricks and loop holes to be magician of SEO. The return or value you will get for few months or might be a year by applying tricks is far less than the return or value you will lose when you kicked out by animals such as Panda and Penguin.

"Just like with weight loss, doing things the right way (the hard way) may not work as fast, but it will work for longer."

Agreed! Quick weight loss solutions and easy wins SEO might look good right now, but the minute stop all the gains just disapear. There is a reason yo-yo dieting doesn't work, so why assume SEO is any different?

Thanks for a great post, albeit not entirely new info or new perspective, but nonetheless I think that the subject matter deserves to be highlighted again.

Some of the issues I have had has been my clients' attitude towards rankings, if I get too convoluted in my explanations of ranking factors they think I am blowing smoke and it makes it harder to close some new business as well as keep some existing business. I have a client right now who I have had for over a year and is aggressively being outranked by a competitor who is using old SEO "tricks", spammy back links, etc., but they are ranking. At what my client pays me, they don't care about any SEO speach, ethics, approaches, attitudes or any moral highground. They just want to rank.

Another challenge I have had is simply billing. When I was just building back links, it was easy to bill. I just paid for a back link service or software, etc. and then marked it up and billed the client. These days, as I am, believe it or not, moving completely away from the the dark side, billing has become more of a challenge.

As much as I personally prefer the ethical high ground standpoint, sometimes the only way to get clients to understand why long-term focused SEO is to show them how scary it is to be over-reliant on short-term tactics: all of these tactics could stop working at ANY TIME. You want to pay good money for that? I don't! Doing it right will take longer but last longer.

I agree that billing for SEO is a challenge, particularly since the clients who need the most work often have the least to spend. Any client-side SEOs have a billing model they're particularly fond of?

We have a client similarly like yours and we convinced them by showing an analytics data after penguin update! Our approach was simple, Do you want to reach to peak & fall in one day like this or would you like the approach of moving slowly & ethically for ensuring a solid position there for long term benefit? Choice is yours! B-). This type of clients with attitude toward ranking ( Without concerning about ethics) may end up with a reputation damaging!

I've been saying this to collegues, friends and clients for a number of years now. Recent events have made this rule of thumb a lot more prominant within the industry but there will always be the people after the quick BIG win.

One of the problems with the world and society we have managed to build here on earth is 'instant everything' - fast food, debt conciliation, one-click Amazon purchasing, 'get rich quick schemes' and so they continue. People often don't like to hear that they have to wait and put in work - much like your weight loss example.

We often have to explain that SEO takes time but that you're building for the future, not just for tomorrow - and a good house is not built in a day, nor is a good SEO strategy.

Patience & Hard Word. Two words we should be 'preaching' in SEO methinks.

Rutt congrats on joining the team of highly professional people in the SEO world. As far as the post is concern I will agree with you… its more about the matter of choice whether you like to go the SPAMMY way or the Ethical way…

With Spammy way you will always get up in the morning and checking up your rankings if they are still there and if there is no new animal coming up from the Google Plex… but if you choose the long way, it might take time to get better SERP value but you can always get up in the morning and will think about new ideas that will help the community instead of checking the rankings and screaming on Google updates…

But from the Agency point of view, letting client undersntad this is a BIG Job and this is where most agencies are not good at!

Totally agree with that. Still there are way too many agencies going for the quick and dirty way. But it's good to have sites/communities like Seomoz that promote the other way. As professionals we can have to do better than waiting and hope that everything is still in order after the next crawl. :-)

You did a very good start with an awesome good post. I think many people trying to acheive the same goal, but where they start and what they know is different. Many people think that there is a magical trick hack crack or whatever they can call to get the best use of SEO. All of those is depend on how well you are doing on the content.

I believe writing is one of the key not the trick, as you introduce about the weight loss of the women. It just so simple, but people think it is too hard.

They have to write to interest people not to use the trick to trap people.

Although your post very realistic but as fat person with big belly i like these lines and from tomorrow i will start Excercising and eating right on right time.... Thanks for this line this will help me alot

"I know a woman who’s recently lost about 30 pounds. She looks great, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone compliment her on her new look and then ask, “What’s your secret?” “Just eating right and exercising,” she replies – and their faces invariably fall. Eating right and exercising"

I fully get the message of this article and totally agree with it, but I see one big problem. Sorry if this has already been said. I'm in a bit of a rush and didn't take the time to read through the numerous comments.

Here's that issue - Big algorithm changes - Everyone knows they're going to happen eventually, but they don't know when, and more importantly, they don't know what the context of those changes will be. Maybe I'm just not as in tune as I should be, but I think I speak for a lot of people when I say Penguin was a bit of a shocker as to what all it slapped. I'm honestly a bit lost on what the low hanging fruit is with linkbuilding is at this point.

Some tactics that were once, not long ago, considered white hat are now completely a thing of the past.

In retrospect, it makes sense, but did we really see it coming? Did we REALLY?

We can all speculate about the what and the when, but that omnipresent challenge with this job is always going to be, what's the next seemingly white hat tactic that's going to get slapped.

I think you make an awesome point that we should focus on those things that you list that we know will work until the end of time, but ooooo man, if only our livelihood didn't depend on those off-white tactics from time to time :)

Great message and congratulations on your new position. Hope to see more of your content in the near future.

I love the description of "off-white" tactics! It can be hard to know where to draw the line. Yes, we want to build for users, but come on, our whole job is to get traffic from search engines! I know that this is an answer that seems like I'm buying Google's party line hook, line and sinker (which I don't, in a lot of ways, don't get me STARTED on <not provided>), but a lot of tactics that were white hat in that they were "OK to do" were devalued by Penguin because they were still really designed more for search engines' benefit than users'.An important distinction is that with many of the low-value inbound links that got hit by Penguin, the sites with those inbound links weren't being punished at all (as they might be with something truly black hat), so much as it was just that the links themselves stopped passing link juice. in effect, it stopped working as a tactic. Yes, rankings suffered, but in my opinion the real message there was "this is not a valuable thing to spend your time on."

It's true, we can't control or predict the algorithm - but we can think about the intent behind our actions and try to consider the user when we do what we do.

Thakns Ruth, great post. Particularly liked the reference to Wil's previous post which I totaly agree with. It's hard sitting with clients telling them that their hard earned cash is going on writing great content, which might help move them up a notch in a couple of months when the guys in the black hats are spamming their way past you.

Having said that it's a much easier conversation than having to explain to a client why their site got wiped out!

Great post Ruth!! It isn't a one trick pony, it takes time and hard work. It's those who try to cheat the system that forces Google to keep changing the rules, making it harder and harder for the one's who do put the work into creating quality SEO. Thanks for reminding us of the importance of staying true to the foundation of SEO.

Hi Ruth, Congratulations your first post and welcome to the SEOMoz family! I think that reaching the top search results can not be done with tricks and shortcuts, and if it can be for a short time, because search engines are constantly changing the rules. What has been demonstrated is that quality content works, a website that loads fast, and strategies and off-page seo link building works too, but needs work work and work. I apologize to everyone for my English ... Greetings to all.

Educate your client on the merits of the long haul, but ethical approach

The second point is easier to do if their fingers have already been burnt, either be SE penalties or by lack of any progress. I think as long as they see progress (i.e. ranking improvements) every month this task is easier.

I think I'll be using your weight loss analogy in future!

Thanks for the post - a reminder of what SEO should be about is always worthwhile - it encourages those of us who take the ethical approach to keep persevering.

SEO is indeed hard work but I think the right techniques are out there for everyone to digest and understand. I thought the wieghtloss analogy is spot on for sure. It is about just doing the hard work and doing it the right way. That is the method to building sustained results

Don't confuse paid links with spammy links, they are NOT the same - bloggers want to make money from their blogs and shouldn't be forced to do so by using Adsense, which is effectively what this whole witch hunt is all about. There are plenty of paid links that are highly valuable, linking from well-read sites to very good reputable and helpful providers of services.

Generally though, the rule is 'do lots of things well' - a very wise (old) SEO always used to tell me that. Good post :)

Great first post Ruth, welcome! I found myself relating to each paragraph with a constant nod like motion. Really grinds my gears when my clients ask why a poorly designed website is above their lovingly crafted website and a quick trip to site explorer shows the reason being spammy links and paid articles! It's even worse that they want to do the same over long term proper SEO!

Hooray, the "constant nod" is what I aim for. It's so hard to be in that position, especially when the client wants to fight spam with spam. Educating the client about the risks inherent in that approach is vital!

Hi Ruth. Congrats and I wish you all success with your new endeavor...

Anyway, if you started your first post like this, I think I'll stop having to read other articles related to SEO :) Just kidding, keep it up. I totally relate to you when it comes to "SEO pillars", some things don't change and avoding "schems" or tricks as you call it will endure more in the long run.

I totaly agree with all your points under "SEO tactics". Fresh content is what search engines and users look for. SO if you want to make best out of your website; having recent update, trends, news etc is no longer optional.

So awesome you are finally onboard with the team, still love starting the first part of a discussion around SEO that it's not magic or any of that crap. It's all hard work and takes time... some clients much more than others, but the tricks are still being bought in by businesses looking for the quick wins and sold in heavily by outsourced agencies!

Thanks, I'm excited to be here! The thing that gets me about SEO tricks is a lot of them also require a lot of hard work - I know some talented SEO tricksters who hustle all the livelong day. But why put that much work in when you're just going to have to figure it out in 6 months when the search engines devalue it?

Toroughly agree with your comment. I have come across a few SEOers who actually work harder with their tricks then if they would just follow SEO guidelines that have proven results over a long period of time. As you state, any day, week, or month, SE will catch on and devalue all of their work. Then they go back to the starting line. Welcome ABoard, looking forward to more great posts.

Nobody knows how the search engines work. Their algorithms are completely unknown, so unless you are a Google Engineer (and if you are…let’s talk), there are no set standards to follow. The algorithms frequently change. So not only do you really not know how the SEO algorithms work, just when you may have figured some things out, they change. You can be on page one today and page nowhere tomorrow.

I would argue that there are standards to follow - Google may not tell us the specifics but they're pretty clear about what the intent behind site improvements should be: to create relevant content that deserves to be in the SERPs, on a website that is easy for Google to crawl and categorize and also has a good user experience. There may be tactics that are new or tactics that are no longer as effective as they used to be, but that's way different in my opinion from actively trying to game the search engines. That's why tactics like content spinning, directory spam and link buying are discouraged by Google - they're intended to trick the search engines instead of intended to provide quality, and Google wants to provide quality. The tricks I'm talking about are those specifically designed to game or short cut the search engines.

Howdy Ruth! You gave a good bang with your post's title! So true that SEO is not a magic trick, but a long Term hard work. The work of SEO has almost been upgraded from SEO to web strategist. Practically everything you do on the Internet with your website can impact your SEO campaign. Enjoy with your journey here in SEOmoz World. Cheers!

I am totally agree with you that, As an SEO one should have to analyse the given site whether the given site will deserve 1st ranking in SERP's or Not.? If, Not... Then He/She needs to re-work (In terms of Content, Design and other user and Serach engine frinedly factors) to make it well deserve to be on 1st position. I know many times clinets are not ready for re-work. But, If you want great and long term results then I think there is not an other way.

SEO is kinda like loosing weight…progress is slow, work is hard but if you really keep at it, doing the right stuff, develop interesting likable content, build a solid link profile and building the best possible experience for the user, eventually results are inevitable!

Now talking about your post, its just wow, it cant be more simpler how you manage to elaborate the whole SEO concept in such an effective way. As you said , SEO has always been revolving around these factors - Freshness of the content, Site Usability, Authority Links, Keywords. Though the whole process is really more advanced nowadays but nevertheless the fuel for the SEO Engine is still the same. Everyone is in urge to outstand its competitors and reign the first position in the shortest timespan and induldges itself into the various techniques to reach on the top without differentiating - is it fair, is it spam, is it appropriate.So its better to keep it simple and workaround the major factors , keeping in mind the user's point of view rather than fooling around the Search Engines Algorithms. This race to conquer the Rankings will never be going to stop, we will surely find the techniques to mislead the penguin and other alike updates and again break the rules and there will again be some elephant update to punish the sites ;).

I read ur blog its too informative and makes to think:) , meme personally enjoyed the way you addressed and which helped me to built the interest towards your information...! nowadays, everyone follow the super highway tricks to get traffic but after reading it gave me a really picture than the trailour ;) and i like to wish that your COFFEE of dreams come true forever:)lol:) good one:)

Welcome to you and welcome to me :). We are both new to Seomoz and this is also my very first comment :). You are right Seo takes time but in my opinion white hat Seo doesnt require a lot of hard work. Submitting 1000000 directories and than hit by penguin update is hard ! Booom all your work is gone!

Excellent post Ruttburr. I keep preaching that the true gains of SEO are long term methods that require patience. It's definitely difficult to wait it out. We want instant gratificaton. Unfortunately, the search engines need some time.

This post really rings true for me. It isn't about having the magic bullet or seo magic trick that gets you to the top. It's about using real facts about the client (what their business does) and making sure that search engines understand how great they are. For example, if they are a member of an association: making sure the listing is complete and descriptive. If you break down SEO to it's fundamental principles, it's about giving a business an online presence.

I agree on everything except on to say that SEO is not magic.
It 'a beautiful and unique magic instead, just because entrusted to the talent of writing which is so unique only to us humans.
Genius, read and scanned by machines and evaluated according to mathematical criteria ... but still genius.
So have fun because SEO is just magic.

Bottomline is: SEO is not a rocket science. You can't rank a site with a snap of a finger. It requires hard work and determination. Thanks for reminding this to every one out there who is still struggling with SEO. It takes a lot of different skill sets. Effective SEO means your site must have a good design; it must be well written; it must be coded properly; it must be organized efficiently; it must be linked to from other sites.

I have always been a supporter of doing SEO in a natural and genuine way and I have been doing it for years except some time when I was new to SEO and internet marketing. At that time I used to get frustrated when our client asked us to make 100 live links everyday anyhow, I used to feel like a link building machine. Now they don't want LINKS but the RANKINGS, A big THANKS TO PANDA and PENGUIN.....

Thank You Ruth Burr for this lovely read....Its My First Comment on on SEOMOZ, I am sure I will learn a lot from the wonderful community.

This is something I try and apply to everything I do. Once the ground work is done and done to a high level the more stable the project will be, whether its a webiste, App or blog post. Doing things to correct way may be harder at first but I agree in the long run will be worth the hard work.

The comparison of SEO with weight loss is apt, Ruth. Sure, there are a couple of methods (exercise more, eat less) but with search engines getting smarter every day, SEO is not going to happen with tricks. Ironically, wearing black makes people look thinner but they aren't. :) Same with black hat SEO. I'm pretty sure my site has benefitted from Penguin -- at least a couple of my top phrases went up in rank.

Couldn't agree more - this is our philosophy through and through, it's all about the long term. Besides which, even when you find a 'trick' that does work, it will almost always come back to haunt you in the future.

Yes weaning off of old SEO is hard. But really it shouldn't be hard, that they way they are making it now. Just do what you meant to do in the very beginning before you knew SEO and it will work out. Thanks for the reminder.

Excellent article, I always find it easier to talk in allegories when trying to explain SEO and the amount of work involved. There is no miracle to lose weight quickly and safely. Just like SEO, good results take time and hard work.

Great article. The trouble is you get cowboys in any industry and SEO is no exception. The cowboys make SEO to be all smoke and mirrors with "tricks" to game the search engines. Common sense, user testing and honest work makes for good SEO in my opinion!

Great, great, great article... truely. I've been banging this drum for as long as I've been doing SEO (which is as long as anybody can say they've been doing SEO).

My only real complaint? The three items you mentioned that "totally worked for awhile," actually didn't work at all. That's one of the big problems with SEO... the stuff we think is totally working. And that stuff gets shared and becomes "fact" and even when Google or whomeever steps up and says, "no, it acutally doesn't work that way," we'll actually still argue with them and swear it does.

The correlation vs. causation debate is no stranger to the halls of SEOMoz and Rand and I have done a few dances at conferences on the subject, because SEOMoz a lot of times is part of the problems (the surveys, etc. etc.). So I would say, if we all truely want to stop showing SEO as magic and stop doing "tricks"... we need to stop publishing tricks on this site.

What you listed as true SEO under your great analogy about dieting (brilliant, btw) is dead on and what I've been telling my clients for years... now we just need to stop the guess work about Google's algorithm and definitely stop publishing them here and around the web as "facts."

Couldn't agree more with everything you have said. Do the hard work and it will pay off in the long run. Looking forward to reading more of your posts in the future. Best of luck in your new role at SEOmoz :)

"The problem with SEO tricks is that they’re about getting a site to the top of the SERPs regardless of whether it deserves to be there"

it is not the SEO tricks problem.. in my opinios it is all about the SEO. If you do SEO for your client's site you do not think if this site deserves 1st place or not you do what you need to do get this site on TOP of search results.

I see your point. From my point of view, we should be helping our clients' sites become sites that DO deserve to be at the top of the rankings, rather than trying to fake our way to the top with a lower-quality site and SEO tricks. Creating a high-quality, crawlable site and taking the time to build things that people naturally want to share and link to is good for SEO and for site quality. Since search engines don't want low-quality sites at the top of the SERPs, anything that's designed to do just that is only going to work in the short term.

Do all the top ten online shops for screws have guides where you can find the best screw for your application? Do they all explain the difference between a self-driving screw and ones you need to drill a pilot hole for? What about tips in how to get out a phillips screw with a stripped head? Those are some of my ideas for content.

What I like to do with a client whose product is just not very exciting (nobody wants to tweet about window blinds!), is try to think of the mindset of the customer. What do they need the screws for? There is a huge DIY/home building community on the internet. If the other 9 companies in the SERPs are just doing "buy screws now" maybe it's time to start creating some unique content the users will love. "10 easy home fixes that can be done with 2 screws or less" sort of thing. That is the sort of content that can start attracting links, shares and a conversation, as well as let you target longer-tail terms that will be easier to rank for.

Infographic about "the history of screws", "weirdest types of screws seen around the world", or "how/when to use this type for what situation"

Making use of memes seems to work for most. They might work in your situation as well. Nothing to lose as there's a lot of meme generators out there you can quickly and easily use.

An irresistible tagline e.g. "Screw you!" or something funny but less aggressive/explicit. I'm bad at puns.

Seriously, it's difficult to get these suggestions in place if your client just have this one thing in mind: to rank. That is where educating them about algorithm-proof SEO comes in. At the end of the day, what matters most is good user experience on the site, decent conversion rate, and a steadily increasing ROI, and other significant factors (I'm still learning about these stuff). I'd rather have a good, highly-converting page that might forever just rank 2nd or 3rd than the 1st that has a 95% bounce rate due to a poor landing page. Anyways, probably in a few weeks search engines might just send that bad page into oblivion. It's really a win-win situation for you, your client, the search engine, and the user/customer. A good mindset would be to profit by making your customers happy and satisfied.

There's the screws that go through carpet to stop squeaky wood floors that you can break the heads off once you screw them in. I'd be willing to bet there's people in this list of commenters that would want to know where to get those. It's an annoying problem, and can be fixed in minutes.

Lots of examples like that, and by putting together a well written step-by-step, print versions, etc, you will likely see results.

I've been working in SEO since 2006 and have spent time working in-house, at an agency (where I also did PPC) and as an independent contractor. I started at SEOMoz in early May - so no, not long at all!

Hello Ruth, at first let me congratulate you on your new role. Thanks for sharing this nice post. All the points you have mentioned are very true for a successful website. No short cut. When you make your SEO ground of the website strong , you will less think about Penguin and Panda. Afterall these animals Google has created to give reward to good sites.

I agree - it takes time and energy to make sure SEO maintains the momentum once started but I can't say I see it as "hard". It's fun - just a case of doing what you do best to the best of your ability.

Welcome Ruth -Until tjhose tactics are killed seo's will still do those tactics to compete I think the answer is for people to shift the % of old style links (ie comments etc) while starting to focus on some real quality.

There are instances where really good, content filled pages have performed quite well for other associates but I have only just started using it, trying to make the most informative and useful, fun and exciting content possible, with anchor links back to a client site. Obviously it`s not keyword stuffed and I use anchor text sparingly anyway but I want to know what industry experts such as yourselves think of using a tool like Squidoo?

Do you think they are effective only if they collect enough social media interest? or is it a mix of content and social that will help SEO...

I would say that Squidoo can be a good tool to build your brand, if you find that your target audience is using it - you're going to get a lot more traction with some types of content (food and cooking, DIY) than with others (enterprise-level computer software). If you're finding that Squidoo is driving referral traffic, by all means use it - but make sure that your actual website is also a place where, once people arrive there, they'll want to hang out, consume/share more content, and maybe buy something! Hooray, money. I wouldn't over-rely on Squidoo pages to rank for your target keywords, though, since you want your own domain to be attracting as much search traffic as you can - plus content sites like Squidoo are going to be a target for updates like Panda, so make sre the content you do create there is deep and relevant (sounds like you're all over that).

We're new to the SEO World but not new to the world of SEO. In general a good blog but on times patronising. The author makes some excellent points and there can be no argument to good natural progression up the SERPS as opposed to taking short cuts. We're looking forward to reading more and even with our dozen years and more of experience we're sure there is lots we're going to learn. Good luck in your position, we look forward to reading more.

lets suppose a new phone is released. if i write about that (good/ quality content) then my result only stay in SE for few mints. after that if high rank site copy my content and plublish it.. it will remain same on Google Page 1 Rank 1.

The best way to defeat content scrapers is to beat them at the Domain Authority game. There are lots of signals that search engines look at to say "this is a real legit company and not a spammy site." Social media engagement is starting to be a big one, less for keyword ranking but more for overall domain authority. Building relationships with sites in your niche to get high-authority links is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to build domain authority - but it takes time. I would say, start putting in the time now, both to build quality links and to improve your website (for search engine access and user experience), and over time content scrapers will have a harder and harder time unseating you with your scraped content. Also - look at the keywords you're targeting. Take the phone example you use: it's going to be very difficult to beat the phone's manufacturer for the name of the phone. Try targeting more specific, long-tail, lower-competition keywords. Each keyword may have less individual traffic potential but since you can rank for them easier, over time you'll build a solid base of traffic-generating keywords.

What are you considering a "high rank" site, in other words are they just ranking high for low volume, low competition type queries, or are they a PR 7 site with 200,000 pages indexed and a domain authority of 98?

True! But i do wish I could magically clone myself once I have these scaleable content/link building solutions. Im currently building quality content videos, what a long process that is! Hoepfully worth it! I can see the attraction in link farms!

Congrats on the new gig. Amazing that in the debate about SEO the idea that you still have to post new articles/stories/content keeps getting ignored. We had a few hundred SEO experts debunk the myth of "build it and they will come" and everyone forgot that you still have to "build it" in order for there to be anything for people to "come" see.

Of course, that's easy to do. I'm still prone to forgetting that tweaking my site is less prone to get attention than writing a new post. C'est la vie. The answer remains hard work, diligence, and perseverance, as always.

This post is great! I happen to be in this transition from looking for tricks to focusing on the consumer. I guess I thought before that I needed to be tricky to be competitive. Now I have learned to have faith in what's right. This actually makes life a lot easier and less stressful!

I was always in believe that there is an approach of Search Engine Optimization which really required by search engines and users too. Now, i think you have summarized all time working SEO approach that will never heart by any algorithm update. Here i want to add more that this is absolutely perfect and if you add a branding approach in this formulae, you will get an outstanding results in terms of brand awareness and authority of your Online Business in industry.

Your title says it all. This article hit the issues right on the head. And, this point is especially true, "The problem with SEO tricks is that they’re about getting a site to the top of the SERPs regardless of whether it deserves to be there." If you make your site worthy of being in the rankings you desire, you shouldn't have to worry about updates taking you away from there.

What to do when there are several equally competing worthy sites for the top spot? Or no quality sites at all? Who is going to judge the quality anyway? Every website owner thinks their site is the best which is why Google wants to make it purely a popularity contest. It's the only half decent measure of true value when all other things are equal and until some major overhauls is prob the furthest a search engine can take the internet. I dont think most seo's want to see their profession degraded to the point of scoring the most +1's, follows, likes or pins or whatever...we all in trouble if that happens

There are definitely a ton of what we would consider "black hat" SEOs who work super hard - I don't mean to imply otherwise. And people wouldn't try to do black hat stuff if it never worked - so there will definitely always be people who do the "if it works I'm going to do it" school. My point is less that all black hats are lazy, and more that there are tricks you can pull to fool a search engine into ranking lower-quality content and then there's trying to make the best site possible and promote it well. All search engine algorithmic updates are designed to discourage the former and encourage the latter - so I'd rather devote my time to practices that both continue working forever and make the Internet a higher-quality place, rather than having to do work over and over again every time a new update is released. If you'd rather spend that same amount of time finding loopholes, exploiting them for a short time, losing all your rankings and then finding a new loophole, that can work - it's just not how I want to spend my time.

Yup, ultimately that is what im advocating. Both sides of the coin work perfectly well. And yup, discouraging low quality and promoting high quality may very well be the aim of search engines but making the internet a better place whilst a decent enough goal is in the end unrealistic I think...not least for my suggestion that quality is subjective but also the ease of publication, the low barrier to entry on web design, existing platforms with huge audiences and the general lowest common denominator just make it so anyone can come in and wreak whatever havoc they wish. I'm not so sure how well a run of mill businesses aims are aligned with that wish of making the internet better either or how many seo's would turn down the contract if it wasn't...that going to be a tough sale in any seo pitch. I don't really have an issue with your post, I thought it was valid enough its just that I dont think there is enough recognition that the aims of the whitehat and the blackhat are not alligned. They both want to rank sites sure, and thats about where the similarity ends, The whitehat usually is answerable to some client or another who as a consequence is answerable to their peers, customers and regulatory authorities where to my mind, the blackhat is very much like an agile startup who can afford to dance around and dabble in lots at once. They usually are not out to rank sites for clients and are perfectly suited to finding loopholes and exploiting them whereas the opposite is mostly true of the whitehat. I guess my point is that the whitehat should engage in great content creation, measurable practice and professional standards because they are mostly answerable to outside influences. The blackhat isn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth though. They don't have to and why should they when the aims of both are completely different? Stands to reason that when a publicised loophole is proven to work the whitehat seo is going to want to try but the accountability should stop them. Problem is, most of the time it doesn't and this is why posts like this exist.

First of all thanks all you guys, give me the reply. For your kind information I am not an advanced folk of SEO industry, still I have some little experience of SEO. Now, I am working in India for Local real estate market. I have more than 25 sites and I have all my site rank in top 10 and a maximum number in top 2 or 3. I know, I am in less competitive market. And I am generating a good number of leads through PPC and organic SEO.

Now a days in SEO community google makes a high impression through penguin update and lots of people said their sites has been panelized by google and sir, even my single site doesn't penalized. I had done all things like general directories submission, social bookmarking, article, press release and all things and very little SMO. Had I done the good work or not?

So, I wanted to know the "SEO shortcuts" with site example. If I will be aware the negative things than I can save myself easily.

Hello there,
You might know me, I am Gregory Smith of RxSEO.net? Anyways, I wanted to stop by here and take a good look at your content and welcome you to the future of SEO. I presume you have been a Seach Optimizer for a good time now, being that the moz family hired you? One way or the other, I'm in no way associated with SEOmoz, but would like to do my part as an SEO and wish you the absolute best luck!
Hope to see more advanced pieces from you, have a great day,
SEO: Gregory Smith